We designed and assembled a basic air quality monitoring station to start collecting air quality data in Aruba, which was not being done in any public way until now. The idea is to have the design process open, to have the sensor stations cheap and easy to put together, and to share the data openly.

+

+

== Working design ==

+

+

The system we're using for our initial pilot is based on an ESP8266 D1 mini, a wifi-enabled Arduino board, which is connected to two sensors, a PMS5003 particulate matter sensor, and an SHT31 temperature and humidity sensor. Many air quality parameters are difficult to measure using cheap sensors, but particulate matter can be reliably measured by a few different sensors that are available for under $50 USD. Temperature and humidity data can also be reliably measured using an affordable sensor, so our pilot was limited to these two sensors. Links to descriptions and datasheets for the components we used are below.

The wiring is pretty straightforward, the PMS5003 sensor operates on a serial connection, with its TX pin connected to the D5 pin on the board (which is set up as a serial receiving pin using a software serial connection). The SHT31 sensor is connected using an I2C protocol so the SCL pin connects to SCL (D1) on the board, and SDA to SDA (D2).

+

+

The code is hosted on github, with different versions being posted as we improve things. The link for that is here: https://github.com/brenchies/airuba

+

+

For programming the ESP8266 D1 mini, you'll need to install the ESP8266 boards, and select the LOLIN(WEMOS) D1 R2 & mini from the Tools > Boards menu for programming

+

+

You'll also need to install the Adafruit_SHT31 library using the library manager.

+

+

=== Preliminary results ===

+

+

So far we've set up stations at four locations around the island, and are reporting data live to our website:

+

+

http://caribbeanwebsolutions.com/brenchies/

+

+

We also had an open workshop to develop a more intuitive interface for this data, which resulted in the following animation:

+

+

http://caribbeanwebsolutions.com/brenchies/aq

+

+

The code for the animation was developed using p5 and can be found at:

Latest revision as of 12:32, 25 February 2020

We designed and assembled a basic air quality monitoring station to start collecting air quality data in Aruba, which was not being done in any public way until now. The idea is to have the design process open, to have the sensor stations cheap and easy to put together, and to share the data openly.

Working design

The system we're using for our initial pilot is based on an ESP8266 D1 mini, a wifi-enabled Arduino board, which is connected to two sensors, a PMS5003 particulate matter sensor, and an SHT31 temperature and humidity sensor. Many air quality parameters are difficult to measure using cheap sensors, but particulate matter can be reliably measured by a few different sensors that are available for under $50 USD. Temperature and humidity data can also be reliably measured using an affordable sensor, so our pilot was limited to these two sensors. Links to descriptions and datasheets for the components we used are below.

Wiring and programming

The wiring is pretty straightforward, the PMS5003 sensor operates on a serial connection, with its TX pin connected to the D5 pin on the board (which is set up as a serial receiving pin using a software serial connection). The SHT31 sensor is connected using an I2C protocol so the SCL pin connects to SCL (D1) on the board, and SDA to SDA (D2).